Old Truck | Twisp, WA | December 2019
What America needs, says my thoughtful friend, is a portable furnace that can render abandoned farm equipment into recycled steel. Hundreds of millions of tons of old, unused metal equipment line ranch roads and fill work sheds. “Why not melt ‘em into manhole covers?” he asks. “Or fish hooks?” (He’s an angler.) My friend forgets that many country folks measure their wealth in forsaken farm machines. The more metal carcasses in a barnyard, the better. These relics are reminders of crop booms and busts. They’re a rusting record of human toil — of life itself, really — through generations of family farming.
IrwinFoto 